My Lords, the amendment is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Beecham. It would make a grant made to a private provider conditional on the equivalent market rate for the property sold under the right to buy being spent on the provision of affordable housing in the same local authority area, including at least one replacement home of the same tenure and in the same locality.
We have heard a lot from the Government about this policy not reducing the number of affordable homes, but I am not so sure. One problem we must grapple with when debating this Bill is the term “affordable housing”, because I think it means different things to different noble Lords. When many noble Lords from the government Benches speak, they see affordable housing through the prism of a discounted rate of up to 80% of the market value. In many parts of the country, especially London, such housing would more
accurately be described for people on low and modest incomes as unaffordable. There are not many noble Lords on the government Benches, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Horam, who have so far put the case for social housing and the need to build more of it. That is why we make specific reference to “tenure” in our amendment, otherwise we would be letting the Government off the hook when they say, “Everything is fine. We have provided so much more affordable housing. Haven’t we done a good job?”, when, in fact, if we look in more detail at what has happened, I fear that we will see an erosion of social housing, of council housing, and its replacement with “affordable housing” that is a very different product.
Amendment 60, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and other noble Lords, will be spoken to shortly and has the full support of these Benches. It would put in the Bill a mechanism to ensure that the tenure of a replacement property was the same as that of the property sold, unless on the basis of local need a different tenure could be justified. This seems a good, sensible example of delivering a national policy with an element of localism included. I will probably intervene again as the debate progresses. I beg to move.